


common ground

by grit



Category: Naruto
Genre: Multi, Polyamory, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 21:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18973435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grit/pseuds/grit
Summary: Karin doesn't have a soulmate, but she's not sad about it.





	common ground

To quiet the low-clawing rumble in his head, the anger cracking through his walls, kindle to his monster.

A rumour flickers to life.

His life was an ugly haze oozing nothing but hurt and then a snake, a hand extended, trust given, pain – _clarity._

Juugo doesn't want to be stuck in the past.

Not long after he made his decision, still pondering how to avoid bloodshed, a sapling grows across his chest, blossoming into something more than ink. He blinks slowly and accepts it a heartbeat later. To him, it's confirmation, a sign that he won't end here – locked away with misery for company.

Someone out there is _his_ match, _his_ anchor, _his_ soulmate.

The sketch stays with Juugo even when his skin turns grey and he sheds his humanity for something other. He meets resistance with bone-crushing hooks for teeth and tears it apart. The other subjects are copies, bad ones at that, and they can't hope to match him. 

Now that he has a purpose, nothing will stand in his way. It's etched above his heart, a tree in full bloom and beautiful strokes. He's spent now, and he turns back human, leaving another cave drenched in blood.

Juugo shakes his head and rids himself of his sadness. He starts walking faster now, deep into the wilderness, where birds greet him like an old friend, and he's free.

The tree claims him animal, lovable, and its roots ground him.

* * *

She's four years old when it appears, but she can't read her own mark. It's frustrating and although her parents have taken turns and care to tell her what it says, again, again and again, it's never enough.

Sakura is brimming with curiosity, and she wants to run around and jump in excitement because it sounds so homely and comforting.

She enters the Academy a year early, begging her parents to let her join. She wants to protect, she wants to build a safe haven for her soulmate.

In school they teach her how to hit the centre of her targets, they teach her what it means to follow rules, how to identify poisonous plants, how to survive in the wilderness. They teach her how to throw a punch and about what chakra is. 

They don't teach her how to make friends, but they teach her how to read. She grows to love it.

It's fine print spanning Sakura's left arm, a single line: _shelter, crossway for squirrels, branch house for sparrows, jays._ She traces the letters with big eyes and thinks, 'I want to be that person for you.'

Engrossed in books and tangled around each sparring partner like vine, she adjusts and tightens her grip, tap-turns the page, another chapter coming to an end.

Her Jounin teacher is a delicate man with poison on his tongue and he teaches them that appearances are deceptive, that trust is for the dead, that they should never, ever give up dreaming.

Infiltrate, don't confront, play smart and not strong.

But Sakura isn't born to hide, to bat eyelashes and bow to her betters, only to wrap wire around their throats. She wants something else from life.

Something goes wrong.

One grim day, their curtain-cover is laid bare and politics threaten Konoha. Larger winds blow from the East – where the forest grew thicker, darker, and then fainter – when dust and dirt took over.

No one is coming for them.

Their sensei says it's going to be alright, says it with his twitching hands when the enemy sews his mouth shut, says it with his steel-grey eyes when they bind and break his fingers, doesn't say anything anymore when they blind him.

Sakura's heart pounds hard in her chest, and she misses being eleven with a headband shiny in her fist and dreams bigger than the whole wide world almost in her reach.

_Mother, father, I'm so sorry, I love you, I love you –_

Sakura is twelve years old. Her Genin team is dead already and she's kept at the edge of the camp, waiting for her captors to get drunk enough to break her.

Every kunoichi knows, but most don't want to see.

Thoughts are racing each other, chasing her fear, gnawing at her fingernails.

_Someone, any -_

**no one.**

_Sensei says –_

**Don't be naïve, Outer.**

She's more than this, she can be more than a footnote in a failed mission's report.

_shelter,_  
crossway for squirrels,  
branch house for sparrows, jays. 

**Outer, you have to –**

Sakura tears into her flesh with a pinch, closes her eyes to an ugly world, and **refuses to bow.**

Her chakra spikes, sapwood, heartwood, thorns bending to her will.

* * *

Marks litter her skin, jagged bites half-way healed and never touched on. Karin doesn't have a soulmate, but she's not sad about it. Another scar, another forced claim – she's not sure why people want that. Karin reaches for freedom. 

She'd trusted and believed, followed and killed – devotion and hatred running her like a fever.

Where did it get her? It's a stray thought, little more than her own twisted jealousy in verbatim, and yet –

It's enough.

She'll make her own destiny.

Her travels take her to quaint ports, kind people, scared people, and for the first time in her life Karin is free to do what she wants.

Although she feels naked without her headband, with no symbol to hide behind, she likes being treated like an equal, even when she's anything but.

In Grass she stumbles across a treehouse of all things. It's dusty, well-hidden by tricks of the light and just like a cocoon it wraps itself around the sturdy birch. No one's been here for weeks, so she claIms it for herself.

She spends a long time thinking on the design of it. It looks like it grew naturally, but the shape is so practical it has to be at least somewhat deliberate. Maybe Senju Hashirama had left this one behind. 

At least it feels ancient like that.

* * *

Sakura doesn't return to Konoha. Her anger has subsided. She wanders and grieves, and she's looking for her place in life. It's not about loyalty to her, when she's never known herself well enough to hand that loyalty to anyone.

Years pass and the rustle follows her, leaves her with good company.

* * *

Juugo just knows when he spots the both of them huddled against each other on a city square in Mist. A growl thunders from his lungs and he leaps forward, drawing their attention.

He remembers himself, fingers twisting into his coat. “Hey,” he says with a faint blush.

“Hey,” they echo, and invite him for coffee.

The weather is calm.

* * *

Karin reflects and she gifts her trust willingly.

The needle prickles her wrist, inking a red leaf there.

“Tree hugger?” The artist teases by the end of it.

Karin bares her teeth. “Gladly.”

* * *

They branch and they grow.


End file.
